This makes sense. Swift's record label, Big Machine Records, has held 1989 from other paid music streaming services, such as Tidal and Rdio. In addition, 1989 was not available on Apple Music's predecessor, Beats Music.

It also aligns with Swift's historic view of not offering her latest album to various streaming services. When Swift's 2012 album Red was released, it was held off of most streaming services for at least a year. Other artists, including Coldplay and Beyoncé have similarly opted not to have put their latest releases on streaming platforms for various windowing periods.

We confirmed that Swift's back catalog pre-1989 will be available in all of its glory.

Still, the loss of 1989, even if expected, is a small blow to Apple. Swift famously pulled her back catalog of albums from Spotify in November because she felt that offering music to users for free was a devaluation of the art form.

By pulling her music from the largest streaming service, Swift became a catalyst in a much larger discussion about music royalties, artist payments and the value of music.

If Apple had managed to land the entire Swift catalog, including 1989, for Apple Music, that would have been quite a coup.

Based on a demo I saw at WWDC last week, it did look like Swift's music videos — including that of her current single "Bad Blood," will be accessible on the service, sans ads.

Windowing will continue to be the norm

Windowing, or the act of limiting access to certain distribution practices, is hardly a new practice. It's a frequent practice in the film and television industries and it has a long history in music, too.

In the era before streaming, record labels would often withhold new releases from CD-of-the-month clubs such as Columbia House for the first few months of a record's release. That meant that if you were a middle-schooler like me, you had to wait a few months before you get get TLC's Crazysexycool and 13 other CDs for a penny.

Also during the brick-and-mortar era, certain discount chains (usually Costco or Sam's Club) were unable to carry the hottest new releases for a few weeks or months.

Twenty years ago, the idea behind windowing was to convince customers to buy CDs at the higher retail price rather than being undercut by Costco or Columbia House. It's worth noting that the windowing practices for retail largely disappeared by the early aughts, just as digital music sales really started to take off.

Today, windowing's goal is largely the same: to push music fans to actually purchase an album, rather than simply stream it. For big artists such as Taylor Swift, this move can pay off. Swift has sold over 5 million copies of 1989 since October, a rare feat in today's music climate.

Bigger artists are increasingly likely to window new releases unless they can be convinced that streaming won't appreciably impact record sales. Those chasing Billboard records, however, now have incentives to release albums to streaming services at the same time as retail, thanks to new rules that count streams towards the ranking of the Top 200.

We're also seeing artists experiment with how they release albums on streaming services. Third Eye Blind released its latest album, Dopamine on Tuesday. The full album isn't available on Spotify, but four of the 12 songs are there as a Dopamine EP. Perhaps the idea is to give streaming fans "a taste" that will make them seek out the full album on iTunes.

Apple's ace

Speaking of iTunes, even without 1989 on its streaming service, Apple Music has a major advantage that other streaming services just can't match: Access to a bona fide music store.

This means that if you're one of the 5 million people that have purchased 1989 either from iTunes or uploaded to iTunes via iTunes Match, the album will be available in the Apple Music app — whether you downloaded it to your device or not.

As an iTunes Match subscriber, that's how I've long enjoyed access to all of Swift's albums — on demand — without having the actual tracks take up space on my iPhone, iPad or MacBook.

By letting users upload their own music files to the cloud, as well as having access to the breadth and depth of the iTunes store, Apple will have a solution on mobile that is arguably superior to the other streaming services.

I'm a Spotify subscriber and I have hundreds of playlists on Spotify — many that I create on my desktop using local tracks from my iTunes library. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to listen to one of those playlists away from my computer, only to find out that a song I put on it isn't in the Spotify catalog.

Apple Music will still have that song — provided I bought it or uploaded it via iTunes Match. At a certain point, streaming libraries are going to become almost a commodity — with most services offering access to the same artists and albums.

So rather than differentiate based on what album Apple Music has access to — or doesn't — the services's real selling point will be how well it integrates with all of your music. Including your 12 years of iTunes purchases. It's that value proposition that I find most exciting about Apple Music.

Mashable
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